row to a red thread; her eyes were as a cat's eyes are
when the cat is very, very angry.

"Who goes by her side," she asked, sourly, "as she goes through the
city?" And she answered her own question with a name. "Simone dei
Bardi." She went on: "Who is her father's faithful friend? Simone dei
Bardi." She glanced from one to the other of us--Messer Guido and I, I
mean, for Dante took no heed of her and she seemed to take no heed of
him. "I will tell you," she said, fiercely, "the trap is baited for the
prey, and, as things go, it seems as if I were like to lose my emerald,
that I can spare ill, as well as a husband, that I could spare very
readily were it not that I had a mind to marry him."

Now at this there was a pause, and in a little while I turned to Dante,
thinking that it was high time he took a share in our parley.

"Is not," I said, "Monna Vittoria much to be pitied?"

Being thus questioned, Dante seemed to shake himself free from his
lethargy, or his disdain, or whatever you may call it, and he answered
very indifferently, as one that speaks of another that is not present,
"I do not know the cause of her sorrow."

Monna Vittoria turned to him now very directly and faced him, and there
was a kind of challenge in her carriage.

"Messer Dante," she said, "if you know nothing of me, I know something
of you, for Messer Brunetto, your philosopher, is one of my very good
friends. I had this trinket of him a week ago." And as she spoke she
fingered an enamelled and jewelled pendant against her neck that must
have cost the scholar a merry penny. "Well, Messer Dante, you who are
young and of high spirit, would you have a queen of beauty married to a
king of beasts?"

Dante shrugged his shoulders a little, feigning no interest in the
handsome creature that addressed him. "The alliance sounds unnatural,"
he answered, carelessly, and looked as if he would be glad that the
matter should end.

But Vittoria would not have it so. "Well, now," she said, "when all
Florence is luting and fluting for the queen of beauty, the king of
beasts walks warden by her side."

Still Dante showed no interest. "Who is this queen of beauty?" he asked,
listlessly. And when Guido made answer that she was Folco Portinari's
daughter Beatrice, he only shook his head a little and declared that he
did not know her.

"She is new to Florence," I explained.

And Vittoria went on. "I will give her this credit, that she is a comely
piece. Le